Frontier World Gear
“The key to overcoming failure is never accepting it.” — Magos Genetus Halix Redole. 'Aerial Pinions' A somewhat misnamed apparatus, aerial pinions were not designed to allow a user to soar through the air, but rather to prevent divers from sinking to their deaths in the chemical oceans of Landunder. The “hanging” colonies of Landunder are mounted on the undersides of the planet’s continents floating upon a vast chemical sea. Chemical mining, research and undercity maintenance must all be done “outside”, which is when aerial pinions are employed. A set of pinions resembles a webbed body harness festooned with articulated blades each of which is connected to a coiled, reinforced ceramite line. The lines are in turn attached to small motors that contain integral highly specialised logic-engines. A diver using a set of aerial pinions typically connects two or more lines into the city or ground above, using the blades as either grappling hooks or spiking them deep into the crust of the planet, as the pinion’s logic-engines dictate. Most harnesses support four blade-and-line sets, allowing a user to set two lines, while using the other two for cautious movement. Skilled users eventually upgrade to a six blade-and-line set and are capable of moving at truly remarkable speeds. A fully extended set of aerial pinions resembles a great pair of wings from a distance, hence the name. There are rumours of acrobatic individuals finding uses for aerial pinions far from the chemical oceans of Landunder. There is no shortage of dark places where it would be useful to hide, unobserved and unsuspected, on many worlds. The upper shadows of a hive city are an excellent spot for an agile aerial pinion-equipped assassin to attack from. A character using aerial pinions can move at half his normal rate, but can neither Run nor Charge. A character using the advanced six blade-and-line aerial pinions can make an Agility Test in order to move at normal rates for as long as he wishes, until he comes to a stop. A separate Agility Test is required to use a Run or Charge Action. Failure indicates that one of the lines doesn’t connect or one of the logic-engines fails momentarily, instantly halting the character. Three or more degrees of failure mean that the character has overstretched his aerial pinions’ lines and become unmoored. On Landunder, that means he’s sinking; elsewhere that he is probably falling. 'Beetle Tent' The Cestelle Alliance was instrumental in the original creation of a series of collapsible bio-dome structures now known as “beetle tents” due to their distinctly insectoid profile, an easy to assemble portable bio-dome formed from polycarbonate sidings reinforced with plasteel rods. While not as easily transportable as a shelter made from cloth, beetle tents are far more durable in the face of hostile creatures and uncertain weather. Beetle tents have since passed into common use and are greatly favoured by officers of the Imperial Guard. The Cestelle Alliance’s manufactora remain the largest producers of beetle tents in the sector, creating them in a variety of shapes and sizes. All of the Cestelle’s bio-dome structures are modular, allowing them to be linked into larger structures as necessary. The exterior of a beetle tent invariably includes some sort of camouflage scheme, usually a jungle-based one, though desert camouflage is also common. Beetle tents have AP 8 (Primitive), though they can be reinforced with armoured panels for travellers expecting to encounter particularly hostile native fauna. There are two sizes of tent listed, holding up to a maximum of three or six adult humans respectively. The Extra Armour upgrade for a beetle tent increases its AP value to 12. 'Calixis Survival Kit' One of the most basic pieces of gear any traveller should have, a survival kit contains a wide variety of equipment and supplies, all of which are intended to help their users survive in less than optimal conditions. Generally, if the owner of a survival kit is forced to rely upon their kit’s contents, something has gone wrong—a particularly deadly prospect on an alien world. Several trade guilds within the Calixis Sector manufacture portable survival kits, with the ones produced by Haal-Lorden of Cantus particularly favoured, as that guild has held a contract to produce kits for the Imperial Guard for several centuries. There are many variants to be had and well-travelled users frequently tailor their personal survival kits to the specific environments they intend to find themselves within. A typical kit includes: two blade razors, an igniter, a Helite flexible wire saw, 14 multi-shape fishing hooks, five press weight lures, 25 metres of heavy fishing line, 1 very large hook, 10-metres brass snare wire, 1 highpowered pocket illuminator, one calibrated button compass with a Calixis Sector world specific guide page, four doses of stimm, six Alozith tabs (Alozith is a strong general-purpose antibiotic), 20 Ionis water purifying tablets, two flexi bags, one metre adhesive tape, three metres long Spinlin cord, half a metre of reinforced ceramite-woven tape, three metres of cotton sewing thread, three sewing needles of various sizes, one surgical needle, eight safety fasteners of various sizes, a metre square piece of foil, one narrow-quill with Watersure ink, two sheets of rolled Sure-Write paper, a mirror-finished plasteel case to hold the kit’s contents and serve as an impromptu signalling device. Survival kits add a +10 bonus to Survival Tests—the kit itself doesn’t supply knowledge of how to survive, but it can provide the tools to do so. 'Camp Warders' Travellers to the feral worlds of the sector often choose devices that encourage passing hostile native creatures to go elsewhere and without a fight if possible. One of the more sophisticated of these is the elegant camp warder, a small techno-arcane device with an appearance reminiscent of clockwork scorpions. Data-linked to a screamer (see page 151 of Dark Heresy), camp warders are buried within the soil surrounding a campsite. When the screamer detects an intruder, instead of releasing an audible signal it sends a silent alarm to the camp warders, which immediately converge on the intruder by swiftly burrowing underground towards it. Upon arrival, the camp warders begin quickly stabbing their tails up out of the soil into the intruder. The camp warders then begin “herding” the creature away from the main campsite with continuous painful jabs. While this doesn’t cause any real damage, the frightening nature of the unseen assailants cause any being with the Bestial trait to immediately attempt a Hard (–20) Willpower Test or flee the area protected by the camp warders. The listed cost includes a modified screamer and half a dozen camp warders. 'Redole Re-breather' Widely considered amidst the greater triumphs of a muchcelebrated career, one of the legendary Magos Genetus Halix Redole’s final contributions to the Imperium was an alternate form of re-breather that followed the philosophies by which he lived his life. Unsatisfied with what he deemed to be the “dual and therefore unfocused” use of the standard Imperial re-breather, Redole set out to create a device that would allow a user to stay underwater for a greater period of time than its predecessor. Instead of using purely mechanical components, Redole integrated vat-grown flesh versions of piscine gills with a series of increasingly complex helmets till he found the combination he sought. The Redole Re-breather is a helmet that literally draws breathable oxygen from the water around it, allowing a user to stay underwater indefinitely. As long as a Redole Re-breather’s flesh components are kept wet, each has a functional life of around a decade before needing to be replaced. Even so, due to the effort and materials required to create one, only nobles and their elite cadres can afford to use them. Note that unlike a “standard” re-breather, Redole’s device provides no protection against harmful air-born toxins as it only functions underwater. 'Poi-Savant' Spending time in xeno environments means that sooner or later one will have to sample the “local” cuisine, which may not resemble anything one is used to. Indeed, some travellers try to opt for a plant or creature that has a “familiar” appearance, but this is no less dangerous—for the assumption that a given thing must be safe to eat based on resemblance is a foolhardy one. Enter the poi-savant. A hand-held cogitation device, the poi-savant measures various levels of bio-chemicals and searches for signs of a diverse number of dangerous toxins in any substance that it is used to analyse. Any substance the poi-savant clears as “edible” is safe for human consumption, though not necessarily appetizing. Originally developed on Malfi, where the noble houses even now use them at every meal, poi-savants tend to be remarkably accurate devices as they have had well over a thousand years of field-testing. Indeed, many Malfian nobles make a point of commissioning their own personally tailored poi-savant, generally by miniaturizing them into elegant wands or ornate rings that they can simply pass over their meals without appearing unduly concerned (or rude). Personal poi-savants must be updated regularly as new toxins are identified, leading to an ongoing race between their cogitators and the cunning of the countless assassins who constantly seek out new poisons in the hope that they will thwart their target’s poi-savant. Poi-savants were specifically designed to be easy to use; their operator need only make a Routine (+20) Tech-Use Test to employ them correctly. A failed Test gives inconclusive readings, while a failure by three or more degrees indicates that a blameless substance is toxic or vice versa (GM decision). 'Shade-Servitor' Hot environments are often doubly dangerous to travellers because they can compel visitors to a new planet to strip off their armour in order to withstand the heat, almost invariably a fatal mistake. Shade-servitors have no organic parts and are not, in fact, servitors in the strict Imperial sense of the word. They are relatively small devices resembling a cone surmounted by a series of ceramic lamellar blades that swiftly rotate in different directions. The devices hover about their master, using their blades as natural fans and parasols, occasionally supplemented with a cold blast of air sent over an internal cooling coil. Shade servitors have a small internal battery with a 12-hour reserve that constantly recharges via a series of photonic cells along their blades, allowing them to function near ceaselessly in hot, sunlit environments. A shade-servitor is as much a statement of wealth as a practical device. They do assist in removing penalties due to heat and help to fend off Fatigue in hot environments (GMs discretion). Otherwise, they are merely a clear indicator of a given individual’s wealth and tend to be adorned with intricate wood engravings or careful scrimshaw work. There are rumours of severely upgraded models, ones capable of hurling their blades to inflict lethal cuts or installed with a powered shield, but the veracity of such rumours is difficult to confirm. 'Sky Eye' A techno-arcane device of great sophistication, a sky eye incorporates a small hovering sphere slightly less than two fingers wide with an elegant docking station containing a variety of holo-display modules. The sphere scouts out a chosen area within 15 kilometres of the docking station, a process that can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on the distances involved and the level of stealth asked of the sphere component. Upon the eye’s return, the docking station produces perfect three-dimensional holomaps of the scouted area that can be downloaded to standard data-slates. Within the Calixis Sector, only the Adeptus Mechanicus brethren of the Lathes are known to be capable of producing such devices. Rumour has it the Inquisition has access to ultra-quiet sky eyes that incorporate camouflaging materials, which they use to scout out the interiors of rooms and buildings before entering. The sky eye drone is a Minuscule object that can sustain only a single point of Damage before it is destroyed. It has the Flyer (8) trait. Attempts to detect the sky eye either by sight or hearing are at a –30 penalty. 'Thermal Gloves' To coreward of the Adrantis sub-sector lies the unique mining colony world of Soryth, an icy satellite famous for its rare frozen gas deposits. While the miners of Soryth are a hardy lot, the precision required for their work with tools is impossible to achieve with ice-numbed hands. A single spark from a misplaced strike can be fatal (and costly) in the sub-zero gas mines; so thermal gloves are somewhat of a necessity. Thermal gloves are slender but sturdy gauntlets; thin enough to allow for delicate manipulation and lined with an assortment of circuitry that keeps them comfortably warm despite external weather. The power cells are incorporated into thin forearm shields in order to protect them from the elements. The energy in these cells can be used to power-up emergency ports on other equipment and, when doing so, provide a +10 bonus to Tech-Use Tests to restart generators, power up old data-slates and similar tasks. A full discharge from the generator cells can also be used to part-recharge a lasgun or laspstol clip as well, providing 1D5 shots of charge before draining the power cells entirely. Category:Gear